Chirac set to vote against Sarkozy

Henry Samuel

FORMER conservative French president Jacques Chirac will vote for the Socialist presidential candidate in elections on Sunday, rather than fellow conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, a close friend has claimed.

The support will be unwelcome news for Mr Sarkozy, who is tipped to lose heavily to Francois Hollande in a second-round run-off, as his predecessor is now polled as one of France's best-loved political figures, despite a corruption conviction.

Mr Chirac's wife, Bernadette, has been campaigning for Mr Sarkozy, even speaking in campaign rallies.

Mr Chirac suffers from Alzheimer's disease and is rarely seen in public.

When the 79-year-old former president first publicly suggested he would back Mr Hollande last June, he and his family sought to laugh it off as a joke. But on Tuesday, the French historian Jean-Luc Barre, who helped Mr Chirac to write his memoirs, told Le Parisien newspaper he was serious. ''Jacques Chirac is true to himself when he says he will vote for Francois Hollande,'' Mr Barre said.

''I visit him frequently. After four years of discussions I believe I'm one of those who knows best how he thinks.''

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Relations between Mr Chirac and Mr Sarkozy have been notoriously chequered.

After idolising the man who gave him his first political break, Mr Sarkozy held up his former mentor as a feckless roi faineant (idle king) who ''fiddles the locks of Versailles while Paris burns''.

He famously betrayed Mr Chirac by resigning as his campaign manager in the 1995 presidential election and backing his rival, Edouard Balladur.

At the time, he was very close to Mr Chirac's daughter Claude. When Mr Sarkozy dropped the Chirac clan, Bernadette is said to have cried: ''And to think he saw us in our nightshirts.''

Despite that, she has become a staunch supporter during this campaign, declaring that Mr Hollande ''doesn't have the build of a French president''.

Mr Chirac broke his silence on his one-time protege last year when he described him in his memoirs as ''nervous'', ''impetuous'' and untrustworthy, saying he did not share the same ''vision of France''.

Meanwhile, he heaped praise on Mr Hollande, saying he had the stuff of a true statesman.

However, a spokesman for the office of the former president said: ''Nobody is entitled to express themselves in the name of Jacques Chirac, who will make no public declaration in this election.''

Mr Sarkozy said he was ''sad'' others were speaking in Mr Chirac's name.

The 10 contenders in the French election's first round also include an anti-capitalist Ford Motor Company worker, a candidate who wants to colonise Mars and one who wears round, green glasses - her party's colour.